


U is for Unbound

by Toastybluetwo



Series: Dragon Age Alphabet - Dagna [21]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-08
Updated: 2012-02-08
Packaged: 2017-10-30 19:05:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/335065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toastybluetwo/pseuds/Toastybluetwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I decided that the story that Dagna told in F is for Feathers, the one about the night that she killed a desire demon in Lucius’s house, needed clarification. Here it is.</p>
<p>Chains of the soul, broken only at a great price.</p>
            </blockquote>





	U is for Unbound

Demons smelled like everything had gone wrong in the world, and that none of the beautiful scents that characterized life would ever find their way into the air ever again.

The house had smelled like the feast that the family – and Dagna – had consumed hours before – savory cream sauce rich with basil and oregano, cinnamon and espresso from desert, and the wholesome, soothing aroma of freshly baked bread. But now, there was blood everywhere – blood in the kitchen and the formal dining room, even, where servants lay screaming as they died, their entrails a bizarre and horrible halo around their twitching forms.

Dagna did not bother to hide. She knew that the desire demon could feel her very presence. It would be best to die on her feet, die with a fight against what suddenly seemed to be impossible odds.

“Oh, aren’t you darling. Don’t run from me, dwarf,” purred the desire demon as it reached out for her. “Let me help you with some of your troubles.”

“Nope. Sorry.” Dagna stepped back, turned, and fled from the room.

To go out in the street would cause mayhem. Panic. Many Magisters walked alongside their demon pets on the open street; the sight of blood and demons out of control might incite rebellion among those barely caged and barely chained. To burst out of the front door might have meant certain safety for Dagna, but it meant also the potential for greater problems.

The Imperial Templars might also be tempted to arrest Lucius and Lamia and drag them both before the Black Divine – a very rare action when high-level Magisters were concerned, but sometimes the only course of action if magic grew wildly out of control.

Dagna would not allow it to happen. She instead ran past the front doors and her own safety, the desire demon cackling at her heels. Seizing the iron banister of the stairway that led down into Lucius’s laboratory, Dagna swung herself forward, dropped down into the doorway, threw herself inside, and slammed the door behind her. With a gasp and a mighty yank, she thrust the safety bar across the door, then stepped backward, trembling.

The desire demon laughed. “Such spirit, dearest! Oh, it’s delicious. Delicious! You’re a darling thing. Can’t we please talk, just us girls?”

“You don’t want me.” Dagna shot a quick glance around the room. Many magical options presented themselves to her, but none could be used quickly, or without the benefit of a magical spell as a catalyst. “I can’t come to the Fade, remember? Less cozy time for my soul.”

“Come now. Have you no sense of adventure?” The demon’s fingernails began to scrape the wooden surface of the door, its voice growing harder, angrier. “Do you think I’d let a little thing like that stand in my way?”

“You’re letting a door stand in your way right now.” It was at the moment that the words left her lips that she saw them – a box filled with force grenade prototypes. On one hand, it was certainly what she needed to see at that very moment. On the other, killing the demon with just one was certain to bring the ground floor of Lucius’s mansion right down on her head.

The demon let out a growl, and began to simply burn down the door with a steady stream of very hot flames that quickly began to roll up the ceiling in long, very hot waves. Knowing that the floor would collapse whether she acted or not, Dagna ran to the table, drew the pins out of two of them, and held one in each hand.

Just as the door disintegrated, Dagna made the decision to throw them both.

Time seemed to slow to a standstill. Dagna saw both of the grenades bounce once at the demon’s hooves before two waves of force split them each apart and, in turn, the remains of the door, the wall, the demon herself, and the antique table next to it. Then, Dagna was flying, off of her feet, across the room, past the basket of grenades, and into a solid stone wall.

She saw stars, then nothing at all.

Then, the world hurt to look at, to hear, yet Dagna knew that she had to stand up, to wipe the blood covering her face out of her eyes and to get out of the basement. Was she still in the basement? Yes, though she could see Lamia’s reading room clearly through the ceiling of Lucius’s laboratory. Groaning, Dagna waded through the acidic blood and demon remains that painted the walls and the staircase, dragging herself up the stairs through the screaming of her back and head, and the burning of the wounds that covered her head.

The mansion was in pieces, on fire, and covered in blood. Some elf that she didn’t know immediately set upon her, covered her shoulders in a blanket, and began to coax her toward the street. His master was waiting, he said. His master was a physician.

But the world swam around her, and in the chaos, in the horror and fire and all of the smells, she heard Lucius weeping. No, that couldn’t have been right. Tevinter Magisters didn’t cry. High-ranking elected officials that regularly graced the social events of the Archon himself didn’t cry.

The elf that held her right hand tugged at it, saying words that she half-heard and half-ignored. She needed to come away from the mansion. She needed to come with him. His master was just across the street with medicines and healing spells; certainly he could fix that nasty bump above her right eye. But Dagna pulled her hand away and half-stumbled back into the smoking ruin, shouting Lucius’s name as she fell over beams and the remains of antique furniture.

Then, Dagna saw him. Lucius was covered in blood – it was matted in his grey hair and covered his fine silk house shoes. He was badly injured, and in the care of his eldest daughter, Lina. Yet, he would not move from the spot where he sat, staring at a pile of flesh and hair that did not look like any mortal creature that Dagna knew.

“I am sorry.” Lucius’s voice broke as he ran his fingers through the charred hair and gore of the corpse that lay before him. “I will never do it again. Do you hear me? There will never be another demon in this house. No one of my blood, or any who take shelter under my roof, will ever speak of blood magic ever again! I’ll do this for you, my love. For you.”

“Mother knew the risks. There are always risks. Stop saying stupid things, Father.” Lina was sobbing, pulling on her father’s arm. “Come along before the roof falls on you. Come along before you bleed to death. She’s dead. You can’t help her.”

But Dagna knew that Lucius’s words held an oath, and she had not known him to be one to break such things. The oath held true. The mansion was repaired in a matter of months, and Lucius burned his tomes of blood magic and demonology. He and Lina quarreled, then Lina left Tevinter for the Free Marches, entering the slave trade with her husband and two other financial partners.

It was a final insult. Lucius owned no slaves and never intended to do so.

In time, Lucius thanked Dagna for her quick thinking on that day, and was not willing to hear any apologies regarding her destruction of his house. She had saved many lives, he said, and he only regretted that he could not have been of better aid to her. He had been occupied with the killing of the demon that had taken Lamia’s life at the time.

Even after they rebuilt the mansion, on some days when the mood in the mansion seemed usually gloomy, Dagna swore that she could still smell blood.


End file.
